The field of this disclosure relates generally to power generation and, more particularly, to methods for cleaning a precipitator of an industrial system.
During operation, many known industrial systems such as, for example, fuel-burning systems, generate a gaseous byproduct or exhaust gases that are eventually channeled towards the atmosphere. Known exhaust gases contain combustion products including, but not limited to, carbon, fly ash, carbon monoxide, water, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, chlorine, arsenic, selenium, and/or mercury. It is generally required that particulate matter suspended in the gaseous byproduct be removed before the gaseous byproduct is exhausted into the ambient.
Emissions from industrial systems are subject to government regulation. As such, at least some known industrial systems include a pollution control system that facilitates reducing particulate matter and/or constituents from the exhaust gas flow prior to the exhaust gases being discharged. At least some known pollution control systems include a precipitator that extracts particulate matter from the gaseous byproduct. Within at least some known precipitators, extracted particulate matter is stored in the precipitator for subsequent removal from the precipitator, while other known precipitators include mechanisms, such as rappers and hopper-evacuation systems, that attempt to remove the collected particulate from the precipitator. However, regardless of the type of precipitator used, particulate may accumulate on the collecting surfaces over time.
It may be difficult to remove particulate matter that has adhered to the components of the precipitator, and quite often, to clean such components effectively, the unit must be removed from service. Because known industrial systems do not commonly own redundant precipitators, removing the precipitator to clean it may require a system outage before a time-consuming and costly cleaning can be performed. It would be useful, therefore, to provide an effective way to clean accumulated particulate matter from inside a precipitator while the precipitator is on-line.